


make me feel something

by celestjal



Category: The End Of The Fucking World (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Happy Ending, Light Angst, Road Trips, i just want both of them alive and happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-04-22
Packaged: 2019-04-26 02:30:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14392356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celestjal/pseuds/celestjal
Summary: He tries to commit everything that happens in the following weeks to memory, partly because he’s not sure how long this reality is going to last, but mostly because he’s not certain that it actually is reality.(Or, five times James wants to kiss Alyssa, and one time he actually does.)





	make me feel something

  1. **wednesday / 4:06 pm**



 

It’s no secret that James likes the sound of silence.

 

He’s known for years. Since the early days when he would overhear sobbing from his parents’ bedroom; since his mother’s funeral when he’d rather hear nothing than false apologies and empty condolences from strangers; since his father would fill the silence with mindless chatter in hopes of finally getting a response from his son who barely spoke at all, let alone to him.

 

The realization was a bit of a turning point for him, really.

 

Sometimes, when he was especially desperate for silence, he’d take his headphones to the roof and sit there without any music playing. Sometimes he’d escape out the back door with his skateboard as soon as his father’s car pulled into the driveway.

 

The best kind of quiet is driving with Alyssa. No old mixtapes replaying the same songs on an endless loop or voices broadcasting over the car radio, no conversation just for the sake of conversation, barely any traffic to generate that familiar background noise.

 

Not that he doesn’t like to listen quietly while she talks. He does. He likes that her voice isn’t soft or small, likes that she doesn't back down but instead retorts with something sarcastic and usually followed by a curse. He likes when she mumbles and when she yells, when she sings along unapologetically off-key to the radio, when her uninterrupted train of thought is never voiced just to fill the silence.

 

Mainly, James likes that they can be together without feeling the need to occupy the empty spaces with meaningless words, the kind he gave up on in response to his father’s attempts at conversation.

 

Alyssa is the first person he’s known that makes awkward pauses and uncomfortable silences near nonexistent. He thinks he could love her for that.

 

Maybe he already does.

 

  1. **wednesday / 7:32 pm**



 

He’d have thought they would make hotwiring a police cruiser at least a little harder. As it is, all you need is basic knowledge of motor vehicles, a screwdriver, and an accomplice to stand watch and try to keep her sarcastic commentary to a relative minimum.

 

There are road maps and quite an impressive number of cigarette packs stuffed in the glove compartment, but as soon as they find out where they’re going, they’ll have to ditch the car and everything in it. Until then, they’ll just have to keep their heads down. He’s not too familiar with the concept of being on the run, but he’s pretty sure “keeping a low profile” doesn’t include stealing a cop car and waiting for someone to notice the two teenagers driving it across the country.

 

“So,” Alyssa says around the unlit cigarette hanging from her lips. “There’s a motel not too far from here. We can ditch the car and pick up a ride somewhere along the way.”

 

“Okay.” He’s not sure if it’s her or the entirety of this experience that’s making him open up more than he ever has, but James actually makes an effort to contribute. Alyssa told him he’s ‘coming out of his shell’ and he likes the smile that splits her face when she says it, so he tries to encourage that kind of declaration with more talking. “We could drive in the opposite direction then backtrack to the motel, try to throw them off.”

 

It’s a line straight from some action movie with too many car chases and too many explosions, but it works.

 

She grins widely at him, so he reciprocates the gesture with a tug at the corner of his mouth before returning his attention to the road. The small smile doesn’t leaves his face for the rest of the drive.

 

  1. **wednesday / 10:17 pm**



 

As many times as he’s surprised her over the past couple weeks, Alyssa has proven to have just as many tricks up her sleeve. He was initially confused as to why she pocketed the paper clips that held the road maps together when they were ditching the car, but didn’t question it. Her plan only starts making sense to him when she kneels in front of the door, unfolding the paper clips and sticking them in the lock as he holds up the flashlight so she can see what she’s doing.

 

“Where’d you learn to do that?” he asks, in his best approximation of a whisper. They choose the room farthest from the motel check-in for a reason, but the neon sign in the front window still flickers to life every couple minutes and the parking lot isn’t deserted as they’d hoped it would be. The last thing they need is to be caught breaking into a cheap motel’s last unoccupied room. So far they’ve been lucky enough to avoid being recognized as the “present-day Bonnie and Clyde’, as the reporters have taken to calling them.

 

(Alyssa complained that they could have at least come up something that wasn’t ‘so bloody unoriginal’, but James is just relieved nobody has turned them in for the reward money yet. He’s always been the pragmatic one, though.)

 

“Taught myself,” she says proudly and continues to work at the lock, only pausing for a moment to shoot him yet another grin, this one encompassed by fierce pride. He thinks he might as well start a collection with how often she smiles at him like that. “When the twins were born, my _prick_ stepfather added locks to the doors right along with the baby-proofing.”

 

“Pretty ironic it only ended up helping us.”

 

“My thoughts exactly.”

 

She stands, tucking the bent paper clips in the back pocket of her jeans.

 

When they agreed that it wasn’t smart for him to be out in public wearing a hospital gown and her a blood-stained dress, they stopped at a car boot sale for new clothes. They paid with cash. There’s a lot that can be said about what they’ve done, but at least they’re getting better at being on the run.

 

It’s almost funny, he thinks, that they’ve turned out to be better fugitives than they ever were children to their parents. But he’s new to the whole empathy thing, so maybe it’s just sad.

 

  1. **thursday / 1:40 am**



 

“James?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“What happens after this?”

 

There’s a lengthy pause between them and neither says anything. After struggling to think of something to say and coming to the firm conclusion that there isn’t anything worthy enough, he finally goes to break the silence only to find he doesn’t know how to say it. He can’t offer any honest answer other than the “I don’t know” that’s forced out.

 

She squirms, turning to face him when he loosens his arms around her so her head rests on the pillow across from his. When he opens his eyes to look at her, he assesses the damage and hopes he hasn’t said the wrong thing. He does that a lot.

 

Her eyes aren’t red and puffy as he expected them to be, and there are no tears running down her cheeks or welling up in her eyes. He almost goes to move his hand to rest on her arm, but her shoulders are hunched in a way that hers never are. The tension is so palpable that even _he_ can feel it radiating off her body in waves.

 

Alyssa’s eyes roam over his face before landing on his eyes. She swallows and opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out. There’s no hesitation this time when he raises his hand to brush away a stray piece of hair that had fallen into her face. He can only hope that he’s getting better at comforting people, because he has a feeling that this whole ‘criminals at large’ thing is going to require a lot of reassurance and comfort on his part.

 

“James?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“I’m scared.”

 

He doesn’t know how she does it, but there’s a touch of both vulnerability and defiance in her voice when the words leave her mouth. This time, a single tear runs down one cheek and her chin trembles as she raises it like she’s daring him to call her out on the tears.

 

“Me too,” he says, and for once he really means it.

 

  1. **thursday / 6:21 pm**



 

If asked, James would say that Alyssa is probably the least subtle person he knows. She can be loud, and has a tendency to make impulsive choices, and generally likes for her presence to be known wherever she goes. Those aren’t exactly the kind of qualities one wants to have while on the run, but she’s managed just fine so far.

 

Every one of the traits he has discovered over the past few weeks would lead him to believe that she would make the worst candidate for a successful criminal, let alone a pickpocket.

 

If asked, James would answer incorrectly.

 

As it turns out, Alyssa can be incredibly sneaky when she is either already willing or challenged to do so. He’s not really sure which one applies in this specific context. On one hand, he doesn’t think he’s ever purposefully challenged anyone, but on the other hand, he did smile and say something along the lines of “there’s no way” when she told him her plan.

 

“What, you don’t think I can do it?”

 

“It’s just — it’s a bit risky, yeah? Do you have any practice?”

 

She shoots him that signature glare of hers, her jaw clenching in a way that he didn’t take notice of until he realized it mirrors her father’s. “I guess there’s no better time to start than now, is there?”

 

And with that, she disappears into the crowd. He’s proven wrong in less than ten minutes, with nothing more than a bump to some stranger’s shoulder and an impressively genuine apology. She returns to him with a proud smile, eyes impossibility bright, and pulls a thick leather wallet from the back pocket of her jeans.

 

She buys them the first filling meal they’ve had in weeks. The guy they pay off seems plenty pleased with the bargain: half the cash they had and something from the menu in return for getting them as much food from the diner across the street as the money can afford him, no questions asked.

 

The guy seems pleased with the arrangement, but James suspects Alyssa is even more pleased with herself.

 

**+1 saturday / 1:57 pm / one month later**

 

He tries to commit everything that happens in the following weeks to memory, partly because he’s not sure how long this reality is going to last, but mostly because he’s not certain that it actually _is_ reality. A couple months ago, he never thought something like this _could_ be his reality. He’s now only slightly more convinced that it’s actually happening to him.

 

And this is what (he’s pretty sure) is happening:

 

Driving through the night across miles and miles of open highway, music playing softly in the background, him glancing over every few minutes to watch as she fades in and out of sleep. Trying and failing to teach her how to drive, deciding to abandon the cause when she nearly runs over a ten-year-old playing in the street. The faint ache in his cheeks from smiling too much at her terrible off-key singing, wondering if she’s actually tone deaf, or if she just doesn’t give a fuck — knowing from experience that it’s the latter.

 

There’s more than that, too. Moments that feel like it isn’t really him, it can’t be, because how could it? But those moments are happening less and less the longer they’re on the road, and the more he realizes that he’s not who he once knew himself to be, that he’s finding himself when he didn’t know he was lost.

 

He isn’t emotionless or unfeeling, he isn’t completely incapable of caring for or falling in love with someone. He isn’t, and never really was, a psychopath.

 

He has finally started to _feel_ things.

 

Surprisingly, it’s most commonly the little moments, the simple gestures, the quiet words spoken into the dark, that make him start to realize all this.

 

There’s one moment in particular that he knows will always stand out in his hindsight.

 

They stop at a beach somewhere along the way. It’s beautiful, but the tides are low and the wind is strong enough to fight against them as they move towards the shore. Cold air bites harshly at any bare skin it encounters, and he can tell it bothers her because as soon as they get out of the car, she pulls her shirt sleeves down and tucks her arms close to her chest.

 

It’s something he’s seen his father do for his mother countless times when he was younger, but her reaction was always to flinch away and refuse the offer. He figures he’s taking a risk, which is something else he’s started doing recently.

 

He unzips his shearling jacket, and he thinks it’s important to note that he bought it at a car boot sale because she thought he looked ‘swanky’ when she made him try it on.

 

Something — he’s not quick enough to catch what exactly it is — flashes across her features as soon as she realizes he’s taking the jacket off and offering it to her. Her eyes flicker down to his outstretched hand, then flash back up to meet his gaze, and the confusion in her expression is slowly replaced with something else. He can’t be certain, but he thinks what he sees is more than just appreciation.

 

A lot has changed in the past couple months, but he’s still afraid to pinpoint the exact emotion that he already knows is there. Instead, he instinctively ducks his head to hide a small smile and hangs the oversized jacket over her shoulders.

 

Before he can return to his position at her side, though, she reaches up to grab the collar of his shirt and pull him down to her level. When she presses her chapped lips to his, he doesn’t hesitate to return the kiss, going as far as to place his hands on her hips to tug her closer. It’s not new, not really, but it’s something to get used to.

 

She rewards him with another one of those grins when they pull away, and he’s looking forward to spending as much time as he’s allowed completing the collection. Maybe he’s too distracted by the sight of her to notice, or maybe he’s finally gotten familiar with having someone touch him, but he doesn’t flinch when she takes his burnt hand in hers.

 

It feels good.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i know it's been literal months since the show came out but it took me forever to finish this. i know not many people will read it, (if anyone at all lmao), but i just wanted to post it and move on.
> 
> title from "feel something" by jaymes young


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